From the kitchen to the racetrack and back again

Cooking

One of the secrets of both sticking to a budget and minimising food waste is meal planning. There are various apps you can download but none I have found as user friendly as the good, old pen and paper! I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always great at meal planning and, even when I do, life has a habit of changing our plans but I am trying to get back in the habit.

Looking around for tips I found an image of a menu planning jar, thought what a great idea, bought some lollipop sticks and then promptly did…..well absolutely nothing at all!

I am now intending to go through my recipe file, my books and all those odd magazine cuttings (as well as my Pinterest pins) to write down all the things we cook, pop them in a jar and then use them as inspiration for my meal plans.

For far better instructions than mine, try looking at this Menu Jar idea.

Like this:

Even though I’ve been writing this blog for several months, I still feel like a newcomer. Back in December I decided to sign up for the blogging101 course, it’s just started and we’ve been given our first assignment. It’s simply to introduce ourselves. Sounds simple, right?

Well it should be really, I’ve already introduced myself in my About section which also links to my first post, much of which is still true. Yes I could keep a diary but I’d never remember to write in it, having followers and a sense of community here encourages me to keep trying, keep writing , keep coming back.

I still live in the middle of nowhere and my recipes still feature food that anyone (in theory) can get hold of, still no truffle oil here although I did stuff some chicken with sun dried tomato, olive and caper meze the other day. Lack of posh delis or even large supermarkets means that’s about as exotic as my food gets. But it is achievable. Maybe not interesting though.

I now work part time so in theory should have more time, this is partly true, I made bread again recently (post coming soon!) and have been able to do more slow cooking, but I still keep running out of time. At least trying to blog makes me do something for myself, something I enjoy and hopefully over time my writing skills and style will improve.

My blog is not all about cooking though, the cars section is less busy but it’s there. Why cars? I could have just written a food blog but that certainly wouldn’t reflect all I do, cars are my passion. Most of the events we go to run from April to October so there will be more posts about motorsport during that time. I definitely write for two very different crowds with little crossover, is that dangerous, after all it means most people will only ever be interested in a section of my blog, but the flipside is more people might find it and read it. That’s the theory anyway. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.